


Ade

by Bentoni



Category: Mutant Chronicles (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Cyberpunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:08:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bentoni/pseuds/Bentoni
Summary: Written in 2015 this was a work that faded into oblivion.I was so happy to find it on my computer.It's a short story set in Luna city, and it's more of a cyberpunk story than a dieselpunk story.





	Ade

Ade crossed the busy street, careful not to let the rain pour into her military grade poncho. She didn’t see her shadow, but surely he was after her. He must be.

Two Luna P.D. Riot Cops were standing on overwatch on the corner, and then another two just down the street. The rain made a hammering sound on their shoulder pads. Small clicketi-clack that somehow made its way into Ade’s eardrums over the sound of the monorail, shouting war prophets and the corporate ‘copter overhead.

She clenched her deck under her poncho, holding it like a mother would her babe, only Ade didn’t have any children.

At the age of seventeen she was already one of the more experienced Deckers in Subreality by now. She’d made her way into the subconscious underworld of that artificial world when she was eleven. She had to take care of her younger brothers and got a job at an arcade. Back then she didn’t have SR-receptors and had to use a visor to experience that lovely world of neon, flash and stroboscope.

Her boss would have fired her had he known what she was up to. It was expensive too, but she quickly learned to charge the customers for her own little adventures.

By the age of thirteen she got her first implants. Zoibatsu Flex-Iris. Cheap Mishiman gear. She ripped it out only three months later at a black surgeon’s office in Tai-Sho district. Her eyes were leaking for six days straight until they finally stopped. She later discovered that her tear canals were ruptured and she could never cry again. A high price for a shitty implant that was simply cosmetical. That was the last time she got anything fixed for her “meat bag”, as all Deckers called their bodies.

She made her way into the old school, the big guard moving to the side, just so much that she could squeeze her way in. The stench of sweat way overwhelming when she did, but she also realized she wasn’t sure if it was him smelling – or her.

She’d been online for thirty-two hour straight. Negotiating a deal with a broker for an “Unnamed business associate”. That could only mean corporate ties.

She was to get a couple of things for them. They would clear a debt she had with the Frazetti brothers in Gotland district. Fair trade. 

Ade’s light shoes made a clapping sound in the old concrete corridors. Luckily she knew these halls from back when it was still a school. Electricity was cut several years ago and the leaky pipes made the floors constantly slippery, damp and covered with filth. She heard sounds of footsteps behind her. Was her shadow following her down here too? Strange how the guard just let him past.

Ade quickened her pace, not caring that her scrawny, pale legs got speckled with dirt and stinking mud from the underlay.

She got to the gymnasium, and the smell of mold hit her like a slap in the face. Long, lonely rows of wooden seats were staring at her. Some of the wooden backs of the chains were cracked, others missing completely – as they now served as roofing, walls or other material for the many homeless who lived in this borough.

Ade skidded down the concrete slab that served as a divider between sections of the sidelines and had to run a few steps as she reached the gymnasium floor. The once smooth surface now cracked and covered with about half an inch of water.

She stood there in the pitch black listening for her pursuer, but as almost a full minute had passed she stopped holding her breath and decided to continue towards her goal. Down the last flight of stairs to the changing rooms. There a small sliver of light let her know that everything was still in order. 

She and a couple of friends had stumbled upon this place by accident about three months ago when they visited the old school grounds. Shane got his nose busted trying to play tough to the guard, but once everything settled they were actually invited by those who kept this place running.

A small band of freelancers had jacked into the hardline of a corporate electricity line, and among that, Ade hade discovered, a hub that connected straight into Subreality. 

The leader of their band, Trix, wouldn’t like that Ade had brought her Shadow here, but that didn’t matter. She had to make the final arrangements with a couple of hot shot SR-jockeys that could help her with her heist. There was no time to find a white line and make it grey, she had to jack in now, and the School was the only line she had. She just prayed no one was on to her just yet. She knew her Shadow had been on her tail since before this deal so the Shadow obviously wanted something else. He’d been after her for almost a month now, and while it still freaked her out she was strangely getting used to it too.

The sliver of light broadened as she shove open the door and made her way through the old cupboard and across the pebbles that still showed the signs of once having been a wall. There was a short jump down to the maintenance room that had now been transformed into a small community of Freelancers, free grazers and Novasocialists, all in a tight and familiar troupe of almost fifty people. The very nature of the people that lived here was that of people in constant motion, and as such its population was ever changing with the comings and goings of specific individuals. 

Ade looked around her and slipped in among the many aimless wanderers in the narrow webways that was this place.

Most people here didn’t know much about Subreality. It is typically a rich man’s toy, but Ade had her way around the fees that Cybertronic tried to force upon her. She and her peers wouldn’t let corporate greed stand in the way of true freedom of information. She called herself a decker from the deck she had to use in order to interact with Subreality in more ways than just experiencing it. In order to hack and slash your way through defense programs, ‘ICE’ , she needed a deck.

Because of the unusual existence of a decker, she was almost always alone in the darkest corned of the community, where the Hub to SR was. 

She sat down on the rusty metal decking and tried to ignore the loud debate going on in the adjacent room. She found the small hatch that’s she’d bent open so many times now over the past few months. The first time she did it, it was like finding a treasure, and she still got a small prick of joy rushing through her thin body when she opened that small port into her world. The real world. The world of Subreality.

She fiddles up the thin silicone wire that connected her deck to the small improvised jack into the Hub. She then let her dirty fingers undo the entanglement that was the SR-interface wire. She shoved it bluntly into her jack in the back of her neck. She felt the thrill of when her own sensory image instantly changed into the bright, enthralling light that is the Subreality.

Her true home. The Cybers might have created this place in the beginning, but it was much more hers than it was theirs. At least now. 

She was truly free.


End file.
